Search

Yesterday, Senate majority leader Harry Reid filed cloture on the new stand-alone bill to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The Senate will most likely vote on it tomorrow. Obviously, we’re all hopeful that this discriminatory policy will finally be repealed and that LGBT servicemen and women will finally be treated with the respect and dignity that they deserve. I hope that any senators still hanging out on the wrong side of history take a moment to read this letter, posted at Jezebel, from a gay soldier who’s about to deploy to Afghanistan:

The silence is the hardest part. I listen intently as my fellow soldiers talk about facing the reality of leaving their loved ones for a year and all the life events that will be missed. I don’t talk about my own experience at all, because it’s easier to come across as cold and removed than to risk slipping and mentioning that my loved one is of the same gender. For all I know, there are other gay soldiers in my unit, ones who understand what I’m going through. My gay friends in civilian life are supportive, but they don’t often understand the military or soldiering. That camouflage is another burden I carry as I prepare to leave.

Go read the whole thing here, and let’s all hope that the US Senate gets it together and does the right thing tomorrow.

New York, NY

Chloe Angyal is a journalist and scholar of popular culture from Sydney, Australia. She joined the Feministing team in 2009.
Her writing about politics and popular culture has been published in The Atlantic, The Guardian, New York magazine, Reuters, The LA Times and many other outlets in the US, Australia, UK, and France. She makes regular appearances on radio and television in the US and Australia. She has an AB in Sociology from Princeton University and a PhD in Arts and Media from the University of New South Wales. Her academic work focuses on Hollywood romantic comedies; her doctoral thesis was about how the genre depicts gender, sex, and power, and grew out of a series she wrote for Feministing, the Feministing Rom Com Review. Chloe is a Senior Facilitator at The OpEd Project and a Senior Advisor to The Harry Potter Alliance. You can read more of her writing at chloesangyal.com

Chloe Angyal is a journalist and scholar of popular culture from Sydney, Australia.

Last week, the organization Sea Change released “Saying Abortion Aloud,” an extensive report examining how we can better support those who speak out for reproductive justice. We spoke with its creators to learn more about the research and what steps we can start taking today.

While we don’t know how many there will be once all the votes are tallied and the next Congress is sworn in, with Democrat Alma Adams’s victory a special election for representative of North Carolina’s 12th District, there are now 100 women in Congress for the first time ever. (Of course, another way of saying that is that it is 2014 and women make up less than 20 percent of Congress.)

Colorado and North Dakota both rejected personhood initiatives, while Tennessee voters unfortunately narrowly approved an amendment that declares that the state constitution does not guarantee the right to an abortion. (Colorado voters must be tired if having to say–three times now–that they ...

While we don’t know how many there will be once all the votes are tallied and the next Congress is sworn in, with Democrat Alma Adams’s victory a special election for representative of North ...